The Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) EDGAR may have some competition on
its hands as the industry consolidates.
Morningstar (NDAQ:
MORN), a popular investment research and data firm, has acquired 10-K Wizard, a premier
provider of SEC filings research and alert services, for $12.5 million subject to
working capital adjustments. 10-K Wizard is one of many SEC filings firms that has
been developing data mining tools to make sense of complex filings as well as compare
different filings and time periods.
Other competitors include public companies like
Accelerize
New Media's (OTC-BB: ACLZ) SECFilings.com and
EDGAR
Online's (NDAQ: EDGR) EDGAROnline.com platforms. Morningstar will use the acquisition
to add to its overall research services and said that 10-K Wizard's technology can
be applied to documents of all kinds, like its mutual fund prospectuses.
The SEC is bringing more transparency to the marketplace by introducing the ability
for pubicly traded companies to data-tag their financial statements using its new
XRBL mark-up language. Instead of sifting through one form at a time, investors will
be able to instantly search and collate information to generate retports and analysis
from thousands of companies and forms.
